susan cohen

The American Library Association's journal Choice has named "Normal at Any Cost" an Academic Outstanding Title in 2009. The honor went to fewer than 700 titles out of some 25,000 published, and is based on the importance of a work as well as the way it's written. Basically, these titles are those recommended as essential for all undergraduate library collections.

We are honored, of course, and hope that it will lead to getting this story into the hands of more undergraduate students -- especially those who will become doctors, but also young people who will be making decisions in the future about their own children.

Today, as well, a successful gene therapy treatment was announced that apparently cured a rare degenerative brain disease in young boys. Nobody can doubt that this is a breakthrough and a triumph. Without spoiling the moment for those families who now have hope for the first time, I can't help thinking about the early celebrations over making dwarfed children grow after decades of medical failure. And I wonder whether it will be years, or decades, before gene therapy is offered for enhancements rather than cures.